


Compromises

by petercapaldiscoiffure



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 05:50:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2840309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petercapaldiscoiffure/pseuds/petercapaldiscoiffure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is not his father - but time doesn't heal all wounds, and sometimes compromises have to be made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compromises

**I** t’s mid-morning when Cateline finds him out in the forest beyond the Keep, checking the traps he’d laid with Sigrun the day before. It’s a picturesque spot, a grove of old oaks covered in moss and the pretty, vining white flowers that flourish across the estate. It rather reminds her of the woods back at Highever, and the trees she spent hours climbing and reading her novels in. She suspects if she looked closer, she’d find messages and wobbly initials carved into the ancient bark - some things are universal.

She stops just short of the center clearing, hanging back in the shadows and taking a moment to watch him work. He’s wearing his old hunting leathers in place of the Warden uniform - she imagines the clanging and shine isn’t particularly conducive to moving unnoticed through the wood. The sun hasn’t quite burned off the mist that tends to linger in the depths of the forest, but its warm rays glint off his black hair and play over his busy hands, and she thinks it almost like something out of a storybook. It’s pleasant to watch him counting traps and fixing breaks with nimble fingers, brow miraculously unfurrowed and - she smiles to herself - humming ever so quietly under his breath. She almost feels like she’s peering into a sort of looking glass, watching Nathaniel Howe as he should have been. The young Arl, at his ease. Or maybe even a woodsman, happy in his solitude and at home in the forest. It’s only when she hears his voice ring out that she’s startled from her reverie.

"Am I truly so fascinating? Or is it the sad state of these ancient traps that’s caught your attention?" he calls. He doesn’t bother to look up from his work, but she can hear his smile soft as birdsong.

She steps out into the light, swallowing down a nervous titter as she settles against a nearby tree. “Ah, well. It was the lack of scowl and all the humming, you know. I was wondering if perhaps you were bewitched.”

Nathaniel looks up then, and now she can see the lop-sided smile that so rarely graces his face. Something in her warms at the thought that it’s for her.

His eyes flick over her for just an instant before they turn back down to his cages, and he chuckles.

"Perhaps I am." Cateline takes a moment to thank the Maker and Andraste herself that he isn’t looking back at her now - the warmth of her face tells her she’s certainly red as a ripe tomato.  _How alluring_. Nathaniel sits back on his heels then, wiping his hands on his thighs. “Or maybe I’m just grateful to be out in the sunshine, with no darkspawn about. And,” he nods over to a gnarled oak where an abundance of rabbit carcasses are hanging, “the promise of stew for our supper.”

"That’ll certainly make Sigrun happy - wasn’t she helping you?"

He nods. “Though she still swears that nothing tastes better than roasted nug, stewed or not. I said I didn’t see how an animal called a ‘nug’ could possibly taste better than anything at all. She called me a ‘typical surfacer’ - a grave insult, I imagine.”

A laugh escapes her at that, and he peers up at her, seeming to consider something, before he stands and crosses the distance between them in just a few slow, easy strides. His sudden closeness catches her up short; for all that he’s shared her bed more often than not in these last few months, in the day they never behave in any fashion that could be construed as unprofessional, let alone stand near enough that she can feel the heat of his body radiating through his leathers.

But it’s not discomfort she feels - it’s something far more pleasant. She cranes her neck upward to meet his eyes, but his linger on the curve of her lips before he looks behind her and smiles to himself. She feels him reach around, and when his hand comes back into sight she sees he’s plucked one of those little white flowers she’s grown so fond of. And she watches as he looks at it and then her, the white of the petals reflecting in the grey of his eyes, and she wonders that she isn’t the one bewitched after all.

He bends his head then, and his warm breath ghosts across her ear. She shivers; he smirks..

"But you couldn’t have sought me out just to watch me," he murmurs. "Or am I wrong?" He tucks the flower behind her ear, smoothing her hair behind it while his other hand seeks out her waist, his grip testing at first, then firm as she leans into it. It’s only when his lips are descending and his eyes as heavy with need as hers that she remembers herself and why she’s here in the first place. She presses her hands against his chest, and he stops, their noses just brushing one another. She doesn’t have to look up to know his eyes are questioning.

"Fergus is coming," she blurts. She looks down. "That’s why I came out here. To -"

He quirks a brow. “To warn me?” he huffs out in a laugh, bumping the tip of his nose against hers. “What an…unusual method you’ve employed. Well, you have my thanks, I suppose. When is this visit expected to commence?”

"Two weeks time, give or take. I just received word - he’s visiting in an official capacity, or so he says. But he’s coming to check up on me, I’m sure. I don’t think -", she glances away, biting her lip. Something about it makes Nathaniel tense up. "I don’t think you should… perhaps we should keep your contact to a minimum."

His brow furrows a bit. “I suppose that dashes my plans for tea and cakes with the Teyrn, then, doesn’t it? No one wants fisticuffs in the drawing room.” But his dry smile falters when she doesn’t laugh, instead keeping her eyes firmly to the ground. “Ah. You’re serious about this, then. You don’t have to worry, you know. I’ll keep my mouth closed. He can leave satisfied, knowing the last of the disgraced Howes is serving out his penance, doing some good for the country we tried to ruin.” Nathaniel’s voice is level, but he doesn’t try to hide the bitterness underneath. Cateline is quiet for a moment, and he has to strain to hear the next words out of her mouth.

"I…actually, I was thinking maybe he needn’t see you at all." At the sudden tightening of his fingers, she blunders on, trying to explain. "I just think, with you and me… and Anders and Oghren don’t know how to keep their mouths closed, you know that, and it’s just a recipe for disaster, and maybe if you just kept a lower profile until he leaves…" she trails off, not knowing what else to say or how else to say it.

A silence descends between them then, broken only by the rustle of leaves and the twitter of the birds. Nathaniel is the one to break it, dropping his hands from her waist and taking a step back.

"Well." Cateline dares to look up at him now, and she tries not to flinch at his carefully composed features, blank and cool where once there was warmth. "I suppose I could take my meals in the kitchen. Or perhaps with the hounds. I don’t think he would object, do you? And of course it would keeping me from, what, ravishing you on the dinner table, since that seems to worry you so."

"I - you’re being completely ridiculous."

"Am I?" He laughs, mirthless. "Of course, I can’t blame you. Who would want it getting out, the perfect, lovely Cousland girl - the Hero of Ferelden - being  _besmirched_  by a traitor? That wouldn’t look very good, would it? And not just any traitor, but the son of the man that murdered her own family.” He’s standing closer now, looking down that long nose of his, nostrils flaring, and she’s breathing heavy with indignation and upset - _it wasn’t supposed to go this way, he was supposed to understand, he was supposed to think it was for the best_. “Fucking a Howe. No, I wouldn’t want him to know about that either, if I were you.” The venom in his voice hits her harder than any darkspawn’s blade and she wants to yell at him and take his face in her hands and kiss his brow and weep all at once.

"I’m not ashamed of you," she whispers.

He lets out a bark of laughter at that, but she just shakes her head furiously.

"I’m  _not_. But sometimes…” she lets out an unsteady breath. “Sometimes I look at you and all I can see is  _him_ , and all I can think of is watching the flames in the distance as I ran, of my…” She swallows hard, already regretting her words, but continues. “Do you honestly think Fergus will be any different? That was his wife, Nathaniel, his  _child_. I’m not ashamed, but he needs time and distance. He doesn’t need to see his little sister is moving on when he’s barely had time to grieve.”

And she’s not lying, but even she can hear how hollow her words must ring to him, and all she can do is stand there, heart beating like a hummingbird’s and imploring him with her eyes to please understand, wishing she could take it back and knowing she can’t. Of course now she sees her folly in broaching the topic at all. Things have never been easy with them, why would they start now?

He’s standing still as a statue, his shoulders curled inward and his neck tense, the only movement his hair shifting in the breeze. She expects him to turn on his heel, and she can’t say she would blame him, but instead he surprises her by stepping forward. She instinctively retreats, hitting the trunk of the massive old oak, and he reaches out to take her hand, his eyes never leaving hers. When her slender fingers curl around his after a long moment, he presses closer, the length of his body molding to hers like liquid gold, all molten heat where just moments before there was only cold. He bends his head to hers, and she can feel their hearts beating in perfect time and in that moment nothing exists but them and the trees, not cruel words or families dead or alive, nor circumstances they can’t change.

"I am not my father," he whispers, and she wonders if he’s saying it to her or himself.

She kisses him then, all softness and kind. “I know. I know.”

She can feel his hand running down her body, searching, while the other pulls her dark hair from its bindings.

"You are not ashamed of me." He presses her hard against the oak tree, and she can smell the scent of the flowers on the vines as they’re crushed beneath her, sweet and heady. Her hands fumble for purchase, digging into his hips while his clever, nimble fingers do their work on clasps and buckles.

"No," she breathes. "Never."

It’s then he brings his mouth down in a bruising kiss, and she returns it with gusto before he breaks the contact to growl low into her ear -

“ _Show me_.”

And all she can gasp as he lifts her long legs to wrap around him is -  _yes, yes._

—-

In two weeks time, true to his word, Teyrn Fergus Cousland makes a visit to see the new home of the Wardens. Anders and Oghren are on their best behavior - the Teyrn is impressed by the recruits, though they do seem a somewhat motley crew. Cateline facilitates a very brief, general introduction of all the Wardens, at the edge of which stands one Nathaniel Howe. It’s only after a very tense, placatory explanation is given that the meeting between the surviving heirs of the Cousland and Howe estates happens at all. They don’t make eye contact, and Nathaniel makes himself scarce afterwards.

He does not, however, eat with the hounds, instead taking a seat at the far end of the dining hall, with Anders strategically placed to block any inconvenient line-of-sight.

It’s as much of a success as anyone could hope for.


End file.
